


Statement Begins...

by Dally_boi



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Introspection, Spoilers for MAG 160, Stream of Consciousness, use of it/its pronouns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-13
Updated: 2020-03-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:00:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23134306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dally_boi/pseuds/Dally_boi
Summary: Jon remembers old becomings as he goes through his own.  The Archive tries its best to understand.Or, introspection about what a monster really is.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 47





	Statement Begins...

**Author's Note:**

> Another introspective stream of consciousness thing! Apparently, that's my brand. I wanted to look at some of the identity things that came up in the 4th season, and a few characters came to mind to do it with. There are a couple of actual episode quotes here and there, but most of it isn't. Enjoy!

_“... When does the Eye make me monstrous?”_

**Click.**

_Statement of Jane Prentiss, regarding_

Fear and pain and a thousand crawling things calling for a home. Regarding choices, an Eye that Sees and Knows and cannot Understand, will not Understand, will never Understand. Regarding an archivist who will not be an Archivist.

Choices. A pen scrapes on paper, and she itches. A song hums in ears that have not heard silence since... When? Time is strange and lost and gone, and the Hive does not care for clocks and planning. Choices. A memory of a wasps nest, with no humming buzzing glow of life and song and spreading, spreading, ever spreading filth. A life of a different sort, uncontrolled, uncontrollable. She is not a monster, but they, the Hive, the Thing That Was Once Jane Prentiss, will be.

_Statement ends._

**Click.**

_Statement of_

Michael Shelley’s choice was made for him, but choices are choices are choices, curving halls and heated air and broken mirrors, seven years’ bad luck to an Entity with no need for it. Names confuse, confine, but It, this What which will not be a Who, has left all that behind. It thinks. It does not want to think, Archivist, answers questions to a running tape recorder, Archivist, dreams of plunging its ~~his~~ fingers through a heart that cannot beat, (archivist, not Archivist), beneath the Institute. Beneath that awful place, twisting and turning like its corridors but warped to serve an Eye even as they Blind it. The Distortion, that What of endless doors and twisting ways and warping, spiraling, beautiful madness, does not want like Michael does. Cannot understand this heat, as the thing that is no longer Michael, that has become Michael, aches for a conclusion that can no longer come.

And the Thing that is no longer Michael, the thing that was never Michael even as he Became, falls to a Choice by the name of Helen Richardson.

And the Entity that is no longer Helen unlearns her acquired humanity.

_Statement ends._

**Click.**

There is no _Statement of_ the once-frightened man now buried in what cannot be a grave, will not be a grave. Of a man so terrified of Ending that he’d tear the world apart with his own two hands, his own two(?) eyes Watching, Seeing. Jonah Magnus, so brave in his fear that he’d swear himself to it.

He does not know when he forgot his own face. He does not try to See. There was a painting once, an allowance to vanity between stretches of his life’s work. Of ignoring warnings, concerned friends fading one by one. It faces the wall, somewhere deep in Artifact Storage, like it will show the monster beneath a stolen skin. He is no Dorian Gray, but here there is nothing but paranoia. He chose this, he reminds himself.

_“I’ve done everything because I wished to,”_ says a voice that will never quite be his again.

**Click.**

The world ends.

Or so they say, but how could it have ended if life goes on? Not how it once was, not by a long shot, but the streets are still (usually) streets, the world stretched out beneath an uncanny sky.

_“It wasn’t your fault, Jon,”_ says a face, a voice, a hand in his. A warm point of contact, an anchor, but he ~~it?~~ is already adrift. An Archive is nothing without someone to curate it, and presentcontactanchor ~~Martin~~ is not that. It tries to tell what was its hand, its arm, that it needs its Heart. But words won’t come, and when it lets him Know instead, its Anchor shakes his head and trembles from the strain of its touch, _“please, Jon, I know you’re in there- I need you to-”_

Its Anchor is Lonely. So the Archive keeps an Eye on it, or two, or a dozen, until the fog doesn’t dare to creep over skin left faded and colorless by that emptiness.

And here, in a rush of Sight too vast (and Vast, and Buried, and Hunt, and) for its mind to understand, it Knows it could always have been monstrous all on its own.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed, I'd love it if you leave kudos or comment!


End file.
